Abstract

Complexity emerged as a paradigm for a world that is increasingly difficult to understand. Concepts from natural sciences, notably chaos theory, self-organization and complex adaptive systems, diffused into the social sciences. The complexity-stability nexus is associated with crisis, robustness, resilience, sustainability and viability. Complexity science offers an integrative framework for the interaction of natural and social systems in the Anthropocene, including growth, climate change, compound risk, tipping points and cascades.